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How To Build a Trading Platform. 5 Things To Know Before You Start a Stock Market App Like E-Trade

How To Build a Trading Platform. 5 Things To Know Before You Start a Stock Market App Like E-Trade

Investors, brokers, and other active participants of the stock market have already been using the latest achievements of the web and mobile technologies in their practice. A good solution is the E-Trade application, a worthy example of stock market app development. And E-Trade is by no means the only one of its kind. Moreover, there is no perfect trading app yet. Maybe you'll be able to create it? If you're willing to make a try, just follow the guidelines of our article which explains how to build a trading platform like E-Trade (or a better one). We’ve made our best to compartmentalize this issue thoroughly and sort out all the details that matter.

Contents:

In general, it's all quite clear: applications and websites are designed to make life easier for a modern person whatever he is doing at the moment. And smart entrepreneurs, instead of resisting this trend, decided to use its benefits to increase their business efficiency. For example, brokerage companies have started wondering how to build an automated trading system. And most of them succeeded.

They were right in their desire to develop a trading platform because it allows having things under control the whole time. Traders and investors can conduct all sorts of transactions in the stock market when they want and can. Of course, these new great opportunities have increased people’s interest in the stock market area. And that was the idea!

Such a stock market web application (and a mobile one too) is perfect for those who are looking for attractive companies for long-term investment, and for those who want to make a short-term deal. There are various types of services but the best option is a full-fledged mobile trading platform that helps even beginners successfully engage in investment and trading. In this article, we're going to explain to you how to make a stock market app of this very sort.

If you want the stock trading software development to lead to the best results, you should pay attention to the E-Trade application that we've already mentioned.

This is one of the best applications that has been pleasing users for several decades. It allows investors and traders to easily interact with the stock market. Later, discussing the app's features, we'll tell in more detail what exactly E-Trade offers. In the meantime, let's say that this is the optimal mobile solution that has an advanced functionality fitting for placing trades, updating quotes, tracking the latest stock market information. And all this is possible in real time.

But E-Trade is not the only competitor of yours. We advise you to study others too, it’s your best chance to achieve the maximum result and find a way how to build a trading system that will become successful.

Robinodhod is a free trading platform that allows compiling personal lists of financial credit documents and security papers, getting real-time information about quotations, and trading shares of companies without having to pay for the transaction. Robinhood’s monetization comes at the expense of accumulated interest from the accounts of its users.

eToro is an excellent crowdsourcing platform which allows users not only to communicate with well-known traders but also to monitor their transactions (and copy them). This is an original idea of stock market app development, one must admit.

The eToro database contains information about several million people from different countries around the world, and any user can carefully examine their portfolios, risk indicators, revenues, transaction history, etc. This application is especially useful for those who want to learn and earn simultaneously.

The Yahoo company seems to have covered all areas of life and business: news, sports, politics, finance... Yes, the last one is true, for this famous brand concluded that its time to figure out how to create a stock market website and application.

StockTwits is another example of untypical stock market application development. In fact, this is Twitter for stock analysts. In addition to allowing users to find out what others think about certain security papers, StockTwits helps investors to keep abreast of all that is happening on the exchange market and be aware of the fate of the shares they are interested in.

NetDania Forex is a program with a huge range of useful features including the ability to interact with currency and equity markets, monitor the exchange rate in real time, build online charts, and much more. Besides, the service allows working with international and local calendars of economic events.

Now, when we've studied a number of your competitors, it's time to explore another important issue that interests everyone who is going to figure out how to make a stock market app in Android and iOS. We are talking, of course, about the effective functionality of your future application.

Check-in. The authorization process should be as simple as possible and, most importantly, secure (when it comes to finances, the issue of data security is especially relevant). Ideally, you must offer several options for registration (for example, through social networks, phone number, email). Modern applications should also support the Touch ID system (E-Trade supports it, and you are interested to develop a trading platform of the same sort, aren't you?).

A user page for managing personal data. The information contained herein should be updated and editable.

Placing trades on stocks or mutual funds with the ability to view and edit the data you need. This feature is a key one - give it the most attention while creating your custom trading software.

Payments and transactions. This feature is useful for executing orders and involves the possibility to monitor and manage flow-of-funds.

Newsfeed. You can be surprised, but this is an important part of stock market app development. The matter is that the stock market is very sensitive to any event (both local and global one). For example, if a popular restaurant brand has been caught doing wrong, there are chances of fall of its stocks, and it is reasonable to buy them while they are still cheap. In fact, the news should be collected from a variety of sources including financial analysis reports, expert opinions, etc. This feature notifies about the news of the market, about exchange rates and other things in real time, allowing users to remain on the alert.

List of updatable portfolios of the stock market. A user should have the ability to track them in real time (and filter the output), as well as monitor his positions.

Deposits. This feature offers an easy way to check the status of the deposit - without any effort and at any time. Don’t forget to implement it if you’re willing to understand how to build a trading system that will be in high demand.

Quote monitoring. Users should be able to see all the quote updates in a real-time mode.

Search.Make life easier for users by allowing them to look for the information they need through a convenient search engine.

Analytics. Participants of the stock market will appreciate the opportunity to observe the statistics and analyze the results of transactions, trades, etc. A good decision is to offer them different kinds of performance charts and reports.

Sorting and filtering systems won't be superfluous either. They will help users to better navigate in your stock market web or mobile application and output data in a user-friendly format.

Push notification. And, of course, do not forget about the notification system. This is the best way to keep in touch with the user.

You have a cool app idea, but you don’t know where to start, do you? In our article, we talk about this issue in detail!

Okay, we have successfully dealt with the feature list. It remains to find out how to turn this functionality into a working program, in other words, how to build an automated trading system.

The process of stock market application development is a complicated one, but we suggest that you pay attention to 5 things in order to simplify it as much as possible.

#1. Mobile site VS Mobile application

If you’d like to limit yourself to creating a mobile application, then you do not need this item and can safely move on to the next one. However, in order to understand how to create a stock market website, you should decide how it will interact with users' smartphones. There are 2 options, and each has its pros and cons.

Mobile site. The mobile version of the site adapts to all screens of mobile phones. Its important advantage is the fact that there is no need to create a new resource for different platforms since it works equally well on all mobile devices.

Full-fledged mobile application. The application has a lot of useful features that can not be fully implemented in the mobile site. Also, the app involves customers in the process of interaction more effectively, which increases the profitability of business processes.

Of course, the mobile application is a much more modern solution, and we advise you to choose it when you’ll be wondering how to make a trading platform.

#2. Choosing the best platform

Now you need to decide which platform your application will run on. E-Trade is compatible with all operating systems, and we think you should follow this lead and think about how to make a stock market app in Android and iOS (both of them).

Of course, if you have to save money, start small: do research to understand which devices your customers use most often and create an application that is compatible with the most popular platform.

#3. The development process

Now that the preliminary issues have been settled, it's time to hunt down a question of the stock trading software development. There are 3 key stages:

Mobile development. You will need the services of iOS and Android developers. iOS experts should be familiar with such programming languages as Swift or Java, and Android specialists must know Kotlin or C#. Of course, there are other options, we just gave possible examples.

Backend development. To develop a trading platform, you also need to hire a backend developer - a specialist who deals with server technologies: a database, architecture, software logic. To ensure that the server and databases are working correctly, this developer uses server programming languages: Ruby, PHP, Python, Java, Net, as well as MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server tools. It’s he who is responsible for creating such features as sign-in, transactions, alerts and others of the sort.

Frontend development. Front-end development means the creation of design and web interfaces, and you will need it only if you decide to build a stock market web application. Front-end developers create a "client" part of the site and deal with everything that the user interacts with. This developer needs to have knowledge of the following programming languages: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And he should be able to work with different frameworks (Bootstrap, AngularJS) and libraries like jQuery. And, of course, he needs to master the Ajax technology which allows accessing the server without reloading the page.

Interested in quality stock market app development? We're ready to help you! Click here to find out the reasons to choose our team!

But the experts we’ve named are not enough to fully implement your app idea and create a trading platform of your dream. Also, you need:

The PM who will help you find common ground with stock market software developers

QA engineers who will test your application or site

The designer who will be responsible for UI/UX

By the by, speaking of the trading system design… Let's dwell on this issue in more detail.

#4. Trading system design

The stock market is a specific area, one wrong move here can lead to failure. The following factors should be taken into account when designing interfaces:

You should start thinking about UI/UX at the stage of formulating ideas and requirements for the product.

It is important to perform usability testing, for this is your only chance to make the product consistent with the original plan.

UI/UX should facilitate the process of stock market app development. Prototyping and similar tools offer technical support and help developers understand how users will interact with the app.

#5. Safety really matters

Finance is a very fine point when it comes to security. Alas, there is an issue of user discontent. For example, many users do not like to confirm authentication, this process tires and annoy them. You need to find a balance between safety and convenience, and we believe that security is still a priority.

Your users are unlikely to be happy if someone gets access to their assets due to the fact that you allowed yourself to be dictated by their unsmart desires during the stock market application development.

Do you want to get a good source of income which doesn't require your constant investments of time and effort? Then you need a two-sided eCommerce marketplace solution. We can help you in this respect!